Houston, Texas – (The Hosting News) – May 22, 2009 – Privately held dedicated web hosting company, The Planet, has made available its new Storage Cloud service. The company offers globally dispersed locations to meet their customers’ requirements, at all world locations.

Customers can choose from an on-premise local node in The Planet’s Dallas D2 data center, or from locations on the East or West Coasts, Europe or Asia, through its partnership with Nirvanix. The company also offers Storage Cloud options for organizations that do not require hosting solutions.

Rob Walters, general manager for The Planet’s Storage and Data Protection business noted, ”With other cloud storage platforms, we hear time and again from customers that invoices are dramatically inflated due to unexpected and hidden transactional fees. Our no-surprises philosophy removes the uncertainty. In addition, other companies by contrast offer a one-city cloud storage option, typically resident in their city of operation. Our customers can choose options from multiple replicated global or domestic nodes. With three access methods included with every Storage Cloud account — including API, Nirvanix CloudNAS or Nirvanix FTP Proxy — customers can eliminate the development requirements typically associated with other platforms. From early customer evaluations, we’ve heard first-hand that they appreciate the scalability, exceptional performance, simple integration and competitive pricing that are The Planet’s industry-recognized hallmarks.”

Coupled with a server hosted at The Planet, customers combine the speed and flexibility of on-premise Network Attached Storage (NAS) with the global access and usage-based billing capabilities of its Storage Cloud solution. All Storage Cloud customers with servers hosted at The Planet are connected through its world-class network, which provides unprecedented performance. Customers eliminate the hassle of managing two separate invoices, one for high-performance on-premise file storage and another for cloud-based offerings. The Planet Storage Cloud provides both services in a single account, which offers a simple method for tracking and understanding file-based storage usage.

Bill Robertson, Founder and CEO of Q Point Technology remarked, ”We conducted extensive testing and evaluated multiple cloud storage options for price and performance, reliability and scalability, and The Planet provided us with the best solution. Our customers choose TrueSafe because it enables them to offer their own Online Backup service. They want a reliable system that is instantly deployed, scales with adoption and offers straightforward, no-surprises billing. Across the board, The Planet delivers the best value, return on investment and service for our customers.”

The Planet Storage Cloud Benefits include, with its usage-based billing and simple integration, that customers can take advantage of unlimited storage options, available on-demand around-the-clock:

Fast, on-premise storage, great rates: Pricing starts at 25 cents per Gigabyte, with discounts as customers use more, while other hosting companies routinely charge between 60 cents and $1 for equivalent NAS-type products. On-premise storage is accessible via the cloud, which reduces server resource utilization and requirements for a separate cloud account. Bandwidth charges are incurred only for outbound-transactions, and all uploads to The Planet Storage Cloud node are free.

Data closer to customers: The Planet offers the industry’s only geographically distributed Storage Cloud platform. For companies with storage-intensive businesses or Web sites, data transfer speeds are dramatically improved by storing data closer to their users. Storage nodes are located in three domestic and two international locations, making it easier than ever to take advantage of cloud storage options.

Simple management and integration: The Planet provides customers a single account for managing both their hosted environment and storage cloud platform. This integrated account is unmatched by other hosting or cloud storage providers. The standards-based Storage Cloud platform is accessible through CIFS, NFS, FTP and HTTP, as well as an extensible API streamlining integration. Unlike other cloud storage providers, The Planet bundles free-access software that enables faster integration and eliminates the purchase of third-party integration products.

Cost-effective disaster recovery, backup and archiving repository: By removing data from servers and into the Storage Cloud, customers can protect against all types of disasters, whether it’s human error, loss of network connectivity or malicious intent.

Ultimately, The Planet endeavors to provide:

High levels of network capacity and speed to deliver peak performance

Instant scalability to handle even the largest spikes in network traffic

Knowledgeable experts with a passion for excellence and a commitment to operate the best networks in the business

The Planet is a leading provider of On Demand IT Infrastructure solutions, hosting more than 20,000 small and medium-size businesses and 15.7 million web sites worldwide. Customers have the power to choose from the broadest range of hosting solutions in the industry, from dedicated servers, Alpha Professional Managed Dedicated Servers, Northstar Managed Hosting and data center colocation, all backed by 24x7x365 support. With the best choice of servers, software tools and world-class service, backed by state-of-the-art data centers and an enterprise-class network, The Planet turns IT into a powerful competitive advantage that enables customers to grow their businesses.